What is SEO? Answers from Google and Bing

I get a lot of questions like “What are the key SEO elements?”. These are simple intro questions that don’t require a very detailed answer, yet I created an SEO process that every new site should follow. Of course, feel free to take a look at that process, but also make sure you review the following guides from Google and Bing themselves. The irony is that they tell you what they like to see in proper website SEO and most of the time we ignore those simple things.

What is SEO according to Google

This Google Help section answers in simple words what SEO is and what are the key elements of the website that you should pay attention to. Also, make sure you download the PDF version of the SEO guide and print it out. The document also goes into things to look out for and unfair business practices by your competition and other weird sites you spot while searching Google.

What is SEO according to Bing

This Bing SEO guide goes into key elements of website optimization. Bing tells you directly what it wants to see in a well optimized pages and what your site needs to be like to perform well on its Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs). Some time ago I’ve written an article on the importance of optimizing your website for Bing search engine. The document in this post is actually telling you what you should do to your website to make sure it ranks well for selected key phrases.

As you can see, it’s not rocket science and the information is readily available from search engines themselves. Of course, they’re not disclosing their algorithms, otherwise they would be out of business :). Search engines are not there to change algorithms and prevent you from ranking. Remember, the goal of search engines is to ensure it displays relevant results for every search query. So all you need to do is to follow their simple guidelines, make great content that is worth sharing, +1-ing and linking to.

Quick update August 31, 2011: Here’s Google’s Matt Cutts talking about this 20-pages document trying to answer the question if SEO will be here in 20 years:

As always, I hope this help you answer some of your questions regarding SEO. This will both allow you to save money by not paying for simple things AND will help you and me speak the same language if you ever need any help. Feel free to +1 this article if you found it useful.

Why you should optimize your website for Bing

Most of my organic search engine traffic comes from Google (95%). 5% of organic traffic comes from Bing. One one hand, I should totally forget about optimizing my website for Bing search engine. One the other hand, there’s one fat reason I should pay attention to Bing SEO factors: Facebook uses Bing search results. And as you probably know, a few people use Facebook.

The logic is very basic – people search things on Facebook. Sometimes they find what they’re looking for among Facebook pages, groups, etc. But if they don’t, users turn to Web Search results. And guess what? These are powered by Bing. Here’s a nice article that goes into a few things to keep in mind while optimizing for Bing.

UPDATE: here’s what Bing has to to say about key optimization tactics.

Question? LMK in comments!

Changes in search behaviour with Google Instant

As some of you might have noticed Google has recently introduced a new search feature – Instant Preview. You can see a preview of the site without clicking on the search results listing. All you need to do is roll over the magnifying glass icon to the right of listing’s title. Feel free to read more about the change and implications at SiteProNews.

Often when we speak SEO, we talk about the importance of keyword research, link building, sitemaps, etc. We all agree that these are important SEO things that change over time. Rarely we talk about changes in user behaviour. However, the fact is that users / searchers change over time too. As searchers we refer to the same thing in different terms, we change our search process and how we filter and select the results.

In the case with instant preview, which was actually done by Bing earlier this year:

… we don’t have to click on the results to understand if this is what we’re looking for, we can roll over and see what this site is about. Google went a bit further and instead of just presenting searchers with a summary of the site, they show a picture of how it looks.

Although this change to behaviour seems significant, it only touches on one step of our decision making process – evaluation of alternatives:

1. Identify a problem
2. Search for alternatives
3. Evaluate alternatives
4. Make the decision
5. Evaluate the decision

Instant preview helps to evaluate alternatives faster and open only the most relevant websites. Which, in turn, minimizes search time significantly.

So, what are the lessons for marketers, web designers and businesses?

1. Make the headlines clean and big. Emphasize keywords and the value your customer gets from using your product. If you’re a blogger, make sure the titles are descriptive and not keyword-stuffed.
2. Make the graphics clean and colourful. Make sure your graphics are large enough to be understood from instant preview. I realize that you won’t be able to do much with existing design, but keep this in mind if you’re planning to re-design your website.
3. Remove overall clutter on your pages. Let the content breath. We’ve been talking about it since Web 2.0 design concepts: open, clean, easy to read, use, large fonts and elements, etc. Google Instant Preview feature makes it event more important to have clean and bold websites.

So, as technologies change, behaviours do too. The bottom line is that along with keyword research and link building let’s keep in mind that search behaviours of our customers change.

It’s cold in Calgary and I could not start my car this morning, and missed a great event with Social Media Breakfast Calgary as a result :( .  On the other hand, I got a chance to share something with you. Stay positive, stay warm and let me know if you have questions.

Website SEO: Search engine submission, step 4

By this point you should have thought about your product, engaged into keyword research, and implemented SEO changes on your pages. Let’s now look at what you need to do to let search engines know that your site is out there.

Website submission to search engines is no longer as critical as it used to be for one reason: the only engines you need to submit are Google, Bing and Yahoo! (and very soon it’s going to be just Google and Bing). And those engines have spiders that will visit your site if a currently indexed site is linking to one of your pages. However, there’s a few things to keep in mind to simplify life for search crawlers and speed up your indexation.

First, you will need to prepare your website for search engine submission. It’s very simple. You need to ensure that you have a sitemap.xml file in your root directory (i.e. domain.com/sitemap.xml). The sitemap.xml will tell crawlers the structure of your site in a language crawlers understand.

• Let’s create the sitemap.xml  file using one of a great free XML sitemap services. Please note that this tool is deal for smaller sites. Large sites with 1000s of pages will need to pay for the services.
• Once you got the sitemap generated, just drop it into your root directory. Once done, just check the result to make sure. Your sitemap (for search engines) should now be here: domain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you can drop the files into root directory you should be able to tweak pages as well. You will need this when verifying your website submission with search engines. You can do it one of two ways: insert a line of code inside <head></head> or drop a file into the root directory of your site (much like you did with sitemap.xml).

Second, once you have the sitemap.xml, it’s the time to let the search engines know who you are. Each of the major search engines has a Webmaster Central. That’s where webmasters talk to search engines. It’s a great idea to create an account with Google, Yahoo! and Bing so that you have access to their Webmaster areas. Submission process is pretty much the same for all 3 engines. Let’s take a look.

• Google Webmaster Central: Google calls it a one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help with your crawling and indexing questions, see keyword usage and traffic information relevant to your site. Once you get in, find the button “Add a site”, follow instructions. One separate step I recommend is submitting a sitemap. You can find the submission button inside “Site configuration > Sitemaps”.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer: Does pretty much the same thing as Google. Click on “Submit your site” and follow the instructions. Again, submitting a sitemap.xml is a separate step that I recommend.
• Bing Toolbox: Yet another version of a webmaster central. Looks slightly different, especially after a recent update, but the purpose is the same and functionality is similar.

Again, submitting sitemaps, registering with search engines is not necessary. Search engines will come on their own (if somebody that’s indexed links back to you). However, based on my experience, submitting sitemap.xml helps to speed up the process, and helps you get on the same page (speak the same language) with search engines. Additionally, there’s a plenty of intelligence you can pick up from those webmaster tools about your website performance in search engines.

Thanks for sticking around for this one. The next step is about setting up analytics and creating a baseline report. This will help measure your SEO results in the following months.

Website SEO: Implementation, step 3

Now that you have all your pages in the SEO implementation sheet, let’s look at a few critical implementation components. This article is for you if you plan to implement things on your own. If you have a developer that can do it for you, it’s enough to just pass him / her the implementation sheet.

SEO friendly URLs

A few notes here. It’s been popular to keyword stuff your site folders, sub-folders and page names. As with all popular things, Google recognizes that site URLs get abused and may not like keyword stuffing. So, stay away from deep pages (more than 3 levels deep), because 2-3 levels are more than enough for most small business websites.

• Bad example: domain.com/search-engine-optimization-calgary/seo-services/link-building-calgary/link-building.html
• Good example: domain.com/services/seo.html
• Often ideal: domain.com/seo.html

As of recently, I’ve become a fan of shorter, but more specific page names, titles, URLs.

SEO optimized titles

Although a generally accepted length of titles is around 64 to 75 characters (including spaces), it’s not always ideal. Shorter titles mean that each word inside the title has more weight. Here’s an example that I hope helps illustrate the point.

• Bad example: Web Design Los Angeles, SEO, Internet Marketing, Calgary, Canada, Advertising Agency “company name”, Award Winning (because runs over length limit, cuts at “Canada”).
• Better example: Search Engine Optimization | Social Media Consulting Calgary SEO (because right at the length limit, but still appears a bit stuffed, and a bit confusing to search engine (“is the page about SEO or SMM?”)).
• Best example: SEO Services Calgary by “your company name” (because this makes it clear to a search engine that the company offers SEO services in Calgary region) .

Disclaimer: These example are taken from real searches. I do not intent to pick on these. I used these titles to illustrate the point. Also, my best example is a bit idealistic because sites with shorter titles are not in top 3 results. However, I honestly believe that things are  going that way.

Update: as I keep seeing sites with only a homepage title (the rest is missing), I wanted to once again remind that you need to have titles for all your pages. This helps Google and other engines do the right thing when ranking your site. Also, make sure your titles are not identical across the whole site. Each page should have its own title.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions, that is, are n0t there for keyword stuffing. The role of a description tag inside meta is to be descriptive to a human. The reason is that, if you have content inside description tag, Google picks it to display in the search snippet. Here’s more on Google search snippets from Matt Cutts. As a result, make your descriptions:

• between 120 to 150 characters (including spaces)
• ensure that your description is understood by a human
• ensure that it’s descriptive enough that a person understands what to expect on the page
• feel free to mention your focus keyword once

Headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.)

H1 is the second most important element of the on-page optimization (after the title). Here’s a few rules I follow and it’s been working for me and my clients:

• make sure it contains your focus key phrase
• make sure it’s written in a human language (not for search engines)
• in terms of formatting, make sure the font stands out, so people know what the page is about at a first glance
• avoid long running H1′s, 4-5 words is enough most of the time

Internal / external links

Links are super important for two reasons: proper external links increase the authority of your pages, and well developed internal links help Google crawl your pages. Good links make life more beautiful for both people and search engine spiders. Here’s a few recommendations on links:

• Don’t even bother with “nofollow” tags. It used to help manage “Google juice” flowing to and away from your site, but not any more. Creating proper “anchors” and giving a link a destination URL is more than enough. Read more on SEO and Nofollow tag in one of my past posts.
• Anchors are super important. “SEO and Nofollow” in the previous point is an anchor, it’s a text that links out to another page. Make sure your anchors contain your focus keywords, especially for internal pages. For example, if you have a page explaining your SEO Services, the anchor should be “SEO Services”. Just call things their real names, don’t keyword-stuff, and you’ll be fine.
• A bit on external links. It’s ok to links out to external sites. Do not worry, you will not loose Google juice. In fact, linking out to relevant websites with proper anchor tags makes life simpler for both people and search engine crawlers.

Alts for your images

As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t have a lot of imagery on my site. There’s a couple of reasons for it: 1) images make site slower to load (as opposed to no images), 2) it’s an art to select the right image for the right things, and I believe that irrelevant images just eat up space. Having said that, I’m not against pictures on websites. If done right, images can significantly increase the appeal, conversions and revenues.
So, go ahead and use images you like but just make sure your images are size-optimized (the lighter the weight the better, but make sure the quality is still there too), and ensure that alt attributes are:

• descriptive of the image (so that blind people or those with blocked images can see what the picture is about)
• contain one mention of your focus key phrase (a 2-3 word key phrase that you use to optimize this particular page)
• not keyword-stuffed (4-5 words to explain the image is usually enough)

I hope this all makes sense. If not, please write a comment. Feel free to bookmark and share the article so that you can use it as reference when  you’re working on your pages. Here’s a little bonus, an article I enjoyed, that will give you a bit more ideas on quicker time to top 10 results in Google.

Take a look at other SEO steps when launching a new sites. And stay tuned for articles on the next steps: search engine submissions.

How Google ranks tweets and insights on real-time search

Just read an article by WebProNews called “Google reveals factors for ranking tweets“. Below is a few key points and a bit of reflection.

Bing on the number of followers

Here’s what Bing said on the matter: “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower”. But it’s not just about how many followers you get. It’s about how reputable those followers are. In other words if I have a lot of spammers following me, it’s bad. If Oprah follows me, I’m good ;).

Google on real-time rankings

According to WebProNews Google’s real-time ranking system is similar to its link-popularity system. As in the case with Bing, the more authority your followers have, the more authority is transfered to you and your tweets.

Here’s a quick note for those who over-uses hashtags. According to the article, hashtags are considered spam-y by Google. So refrain from using them too much. I was actually going to write a whitepaper on the Art of using Hashtags. Now I’ll have to wait until I know more on the matter. I’m sure hashtags are here to stay, they are fulfilling a purpose. It’s just the matter of balancing and using them properly.

Real-time search going forward

Both Google and Twitter teams collaborate on real-time search and there’s still much to do. The key is to understand that they strive for relevancy of real-time search results. Link-popularity analogy is another great lesson. And although we’ve been talking about Twitter = “real-time search”, it’s not the only source of real-time data. More on real-time search on Google.

Search marketers to rethink Bing

Just read an article about the Bing search engine introducing new search features. The article covers a set of new functions added to the Bing interface. I want to share a few thoughts on how this impacts search users as well as online marketing professionals.

Bing search functionality to a search engine user

What got my attention is the trend of “getting things done with search“. Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been in love with Google (and I still am), and I didn’t think there was much room for innovation left on the front end of search technology. Backend algorithms, on the other hand, should always, in theory, be up for improvements.

The front end of a search is very significant. Now that users are starting to use longer queries and learn the logic of searching, the industry starts to pay attention to additional functionality to optimize the search process and get more things done with a single-query search.

The key is to make it easier for the user. Google is still good but I have a new found respect for Bing. For those of you who’s not familiar with Bing here’s a bit of background info: Bing Search Engine on Wikipedia.org

Bing search functionality to SEO professionals

So, what does this mean to the search engine optimization professionals? Do we need to learn one more thing? Do we just let Bing build a better search tool and then jump in and capitalize on it? Or do we experiment now to be the first to capitalize on these new features? Here’s a few things on my mind and I’d greatly appreciate your feedback or comments.

• Content relevancy: Categorization of the content becomes extremely important as Categories become the first step in the search process.
  • Takeaway: we should be considerate while categorizing and tagging properties within web directories.
• Results browsing and meta information: Now that users pass the first “query” / “categorization” screen they are presented with a number of browsing options. Users now have more information about a single  listing. This means that they don’t need to click (to go to a site) to make a decision about your website.
  • Takeaway: all this information is just meta that characterizes your listing, so you have to make sure that your site / page is properly setup with meta data. Proper use of Webmaster resources such as Google Webmasters, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster has never been of more importance.
• Results sharing: The web is increasingly about sharing. The more you share, the “bigger of a person” you become. Bing gets that and adds sharing functionality to its search results.
  • Takeaway: sharing tools and plug-ins on your landing pages are important. Make sure your visitors can tell their friends about your great product.

This article was originally written by me for Apis Design Inc. Visit Apis Design blog to see more articles on the topic of online marketing.